This film has always struck me as one of the most profoundly existential films in cinema, but now that I’m writing a paper on it for class, turns out I can’t really find anything on this subject in the vast reaches of the internet (except apparently some professor at UC Berkeley includes The Third Man on his syllabus for his class on existentialism). So let me know your thoughts.
Anyway, this is my first post and I thought it would be a fun discussion.
Yeah, I considered articulating my thoughts further but hesitated because I’d be embarrassed if no one else saw where I was coming from. Rather, I was hoping people would be coming out of the woodwork to say they felt the same way. Also, I don’t know how many people would be very enthusiastic about reading some college student’s pseudo-intellectual babble about a metaphor no one else sees.
But if you’ve seen the film and are genuinely curious…?
I appreciate your point and curiosity very much, and I’ll explain what I meant if you’ll give me a minute. However I still can’t help but feel that posting an opinion that no one is going to read, for whatever reason, feels rather tragic. Shouting into the abyss, as it were.
To start at the beginning…
I think it is important to first consider the film’s context, and in my opinion The Third Man is quintessentially a postwar film. Being as that the war signified, for many, the death of God, I thought it a profound metaphor for a Nietzsche flavored existential crisis, the ruins of Vienna perhaps being the rubble of one’s moral compass or the aftermath of the collapse of one’s guiding principles. As both Nietzsche and Descartes admonish against too eagerly tearing down one’s beliefs with out preparing some cartesian structure to inhabit in the interum, what The Third Man provides is a visual manifestation of the effects of the Death of God. Vienna, then, divided up amongst the four powers, could be perceived as the resulting fractured or fragmented reality, and the four powers each representing different systems of belief that might utilize to rebuild, and then there are the outsiders, the black marketeers represented by Lime. Doesn’t his cuckoo clock speech just smack of the Uber Mensch? And then there is Holly, who in my opinion was portrayed as rather impotent and who, in the end, gained nothing. Perhaps then, Holly is the avatar of Man, who from the very beginning was helplessly shuffled along by forces greater then he, merely reacting, never decisively acting until the very end. And do you remember what he was asked to lecture on? It was “Crisis of Faith”.
Anyway, that’s just how I’ve been reading into the movie. I’ve also had inklings as to others, but I’m curious what you think.
Haha yeah, sorry if the name change threw you off. I appreciate that you cared enough to sort in out though.
And yeah, the cuckoo clock speech, while famous, is inaccurate. Still though, I think we can appreciate his point.
When you said “this is a story about a guy”, did you mean Lime or Holly Martins? If you were referring to Lime I’m curious as to how you feel that he was useful. I got the impression that the scene in the hospital with the sick children was meant to impress upon the viewer that Lime did such harm that he needed to be apprehended and prosecuted, that his outlook does not justify or excuse his actions, and perhaps that is the significance of the scene where his fingers are shown struggling with the sewer grate, that is, a visual metaphor for his failure to actually transcend.
But if it was Holly you were referring to, I’d argue that the first scene in the hotel lobby seemed to indicate that Holly was meant to seem as a leaf caught helplessly in the wind: Calloway takes him to the military hotel, then a random guy asks him to lecture thus enabling him to stay in Vienna, and then the Baron summons him. Its as if life happens to or at him, rather then his being a potent agent or force in the world. And then when he flees from the child, and later still, when his love interest repeatedly chastises him and ultimately rejects him, I feel all this points to a director’s intention to emphasize Holly’s being pathetic. However, this is why the final scene between Holly and Lime is so poignant, because Holly symbolically took the gun from the dieing man and with it, took matters into his own hands, for the first time in the film. And the shot echoes across the labyrinthine tunnels, across the convolutions of philosophy and life and the universe.
Ultimately it seems to me that Lime was rising to the place of Uber Mensch, but Man will ultimately betray him and gun him down in the name of civilization, and it will be a thankless job. Man will not get the girl for his action, and he will always feel sort of shitty about what he did. This seems to me what Graham Greene may have been trying to say.
Granted, I’m clearly projecting something on to the film, but I think that is indicative of some motive on the part of Carol Reed to provoke such a reaction.
and yeah, I think that his “Crisis of Faith” lecture is the most literal manifestation of this motive. And if you go on to consider the works of literature he is asked to speak on, such as Ulysses by James Joyce, one finds Carol Reed overtly directing the spectator to consider the postmodern.
Haha thanks Strawdawg. I was so excited to discover the Auteurs, I was hoping I’d finally found a place where someone might give a crap about my pseudo-intellectual babble and respond in kind. I feel like a young Bazin wandering into the cinemateque, I wonder who it is that will be my Godard and Truffaut and how long before I meet them, and then how long before we change the world. Its so exciting!
Hmmm that’s interesting, I’d mostly dismissed that bit about the Russians as merely plot so I’ll have to think about it. But one thought that springs to mind is that in the post war era, being useful to the Russians had a certain connotation to it, and probably a negative one, like he’s in the devil’s pocket or something. At any rate it certainly raises the question of how, or in what manner was he useful to the Russians, and I can’t help but think that whatever it was, it probably couldn’t have been good for the US or Britain. I also can’t help but sort of feel that while the line seems to imply that he may have been functional, the rest of the film doesn’t seem to really try to emphasize that.
Its interesting that you don’t agree about Holly being ineffectual. I was really getting the sense that he was just getting batted around, and the way you phrase it: “will act” I think kind of implies a deterministic dynamic that I’m talking about. While he may act, he never really seemed free to me. I just got the general sense that the film made an effort to humble him as a protagonist before the eyes of the audience. The way he likens himself to one of his pulp-fiction characters betrays, I think, a certain naivety.
I think you’re definitely right about the notion of the two existences colliding though, and I liked your other points too. I think that my analysis is definitely still underdeveloped, I’ll think about it some more. But in the mean time, I wonder if you could site examples from the film’s form to support your idea (perhaps the way the camera treats Holly versus Lime, or maybe in some dialectic formed by two scenes)?
@Robert W Peabody III: True there was no post modernism with a capital P, but even the mere invocation Modernism (and note Holly’s inability to respond) could be construed as even more appropriate or relevant to my analysis.
And I think that selection from Lime’s dialogue betrays more of a Machiavellian attitude than anything else, Nietzsche’s uber mensch isn’t necessarily an atheist, but merely he who rises in the absence of God and transcends the inhibitions that oft follow faith. But Lime isn’t inhibited, he characteristically moves between the zones with ease, he transcends the barriers that Holly is visually hung up on through out the film, moving between liminal spaces like a veritable Dionysus. I remain undecided.
Regarding the rest of your remark, I’ll have to think about it some more. Some of it I agree, some of it I not sure on yet. I’ll get back to you. At any rate, our discussion has been invaluable to my paper, thank you.
@Doinel: But the uber mensch is inherently useful, in fact that was the point of greatest personal contention regarding my analysis of the film – that the film seemed to strive to emphasize unambiguity on Lime’s part. But if you’re right that he’s useful, then all the better. But I get the sense that you’re arguing that his usefulness is what enables his existence, then I don’t know, I’m not sure how Nietzsche would feel about that to be honest.
@Frank P. Tomasulo: I think you said many interesting and wonderful things and wanted to thank you for your input, particularly your break-down of the final scene which is exactly how I felt about it and more and is so in accord with my general gut feeling about the film as a whole. I’ll have more to say on your other points later. But yes, the death of God to which I was referring was indeed the Nietzscheian, with all the characteristics which you applied to it taken into account.
I know everyone’s going to say “but that’s impossible”, but I’ve always dreamed of directing a Thomas Pynchon novel, particularly Crying of Lot49, Gravity’s Rainbow, or V.
And if it can’t be me, then someone who won’t try to adapt them literally but that would have their own personal take on each novel. Some one like Cronenberg, some one who’s proven they know how to create something new, an original piece of art out of a preexisting one. Because if it was already successful in its own medium as it was, then what could it stand to gain by being adapted literally, but in an inevitably truncated form? I think Kubrick was the obvious master of this; indeed, what is crucial in adaptation is not faithfulness to the original, but what new and personal art can be derived from it. If I am a different artist then the author, then a literal adaptation would merely be reproduction art, or counterfeit art. Failure to create some thing as good as the original is absolutely inevitable through literal translation. No, because I am a different and unique artist, so should my artwork be unique and different, therefor if I were to adapt something, I would focus on what in the novel stood out to me and create from that anew.
Along the same vein of impossible novels, I’d also like to see Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace adapted for the big screen (I think my postmodern predispositions are beginning to betray themselves). A work as beautiful and heartbreaking as Infinite Jest, despite its unique form, begs to be made into a trilogy of some sort.
That said, I’ve also yet to see a half way decent adaptation of The Odyssey, that is, with respect to the poetry that it truly is rather then some over-budgeted spectacle.
OH! This just came to me, but holy hell, wouldn’t it be awesome??: FAUST BY BERGMAN OR FELLINI (in a perfect world, I should add. But I’d settle for Terry Gilliam…)
I apologize if this is a really obvious thread, but it could potentially be very useful. My school library has pretty much every important film ever made and it takes me forever to pick something, so I thought I’d preemptively decide what to rent tonight. As a film auteur I have this problem where I know a billion great movies and have a bunch I’ve been meaning to see, but I can never think of them when I’m at the library. So any suggestion is welcome, nothing is too obvious or too obscure, too elite or too low brow.
My tastes go something like this:
favorite director: Tarkovsky
close second: Renoir
close runners up: Antonioni, Orson Welles, Bresson
I like films where the form carries a lot of the weight, where plot and dialogue are slightly less essential then visual metaphor and scene-to-scene dialectic. Something pregnant with meaning and composed of manifold layers working together…or just something stupidly entertaining like National Treasure or any Jane Austen novel.
If just the right two guys walked in here right now, this could easily turn into a deep, profound, and ultimately futile philosophical discussion on aesthetics. Luckily I’m not one of those guys. I know next to nothing about aesthetics. But we can improvise…
For some, loosing one’s self in a work of art is to fulfill the artist’s highest goals. I believe it is often referred to as “aesthetic arrest”. This is true for a friend of mine, he actually strives for this in his art work and, in succeeding, beings the viewer close to nonexistence, thereby completing his metaphor for death.
I tend to disagree with him however. Indeed, in my own screen writing I often strive to reject the spectator, refusing them access, taking various measures to prevent the audience from such aesthetic arrest. I believe this form of escapism, while morally neutral, I believe to be akin to drug use, self indulgent, and unproductive. People often become addicted to it (take television for instance). And I know I am not alone in pursuing this goal with my artwork.
Most of you are familiar with the french film critic Andre Bazin (my hero), he wrote at length upon the virtues of deep focus, for instance, for the very fact that it forces the spectator to actively engage the film, rather then take a purely passive stance. They are forced to use their minds as they watch, provoking thought and then growth. It is somewhere along these lines that my sentiments lay.
But sometimes, I think, we should be allowed our little indulgences. So a loose-your-self flick is like candy, occasionally permissible.
@rocky: Those are wonderful suggestions. Seventh Seal and Citizen Kane are easily in my personal top ten of all time list. But I think I need some Hitchcock in my life tonight….
@Rossoneri: Yeah, Stalker is another one of my all time favs. Solaris didn’t do as much for me, but perhaps that is cause enough to watch it again?
Should one feel guilty for pirating movies? Why or why not? Isn’t it a godsend to the poor, culturally starved little mid-western boy with no other access to high art? Or is it the devil and directly responsible for the high cost of Criterions?
I’ve started to dabble but now I feel guilty, so alleviate my guilt or set me straight.
hahaha well its on the BFI’s top10 so I guess I should give it a try.
@Rosseneri: That’s a lot of movies to name and I couldn’t recall them all. But let me try:
Tarkovsky: Mirror, Andrei Rublev, Ivan’s childhood, solaris, stalker
Renoir:Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion
Welles:Citizen Kane, Magnificent Ambersons
Bresson: Balthezaar, Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket, Man Escaped, l’argent, Mouchette
I know I’ve seen more renoir and welles, but they just aren’t coming to me at the moment
…but that said, I like movies and television shows that allow you to choose which of the two experiences I’d prefer. I think Charlie Kaufman films are particularly of this persuasion, and then the tv series Neon Genesis Evangelion was pretty much designed to be that way.
There’s also something to be said I think for films in which you loose yourself, but left thinking long after it ends.
Wow, given this site’s relationship with criterion I expected to find the locals to show much more fidelity to buying DVDs, if not watching them exclusively on the big screen.
but even worse then youtube: watching movies one youtube on an iphone.
I’d quote a video of David Lynch chastising people for watching movies on iphones, but there are so many expletives it wouldn’t make any sense after removing them.
Apparently they’ve tried like three times now to film “Confederacy of Dunces” but each time they start production the leading man died, its considered something of a Hollywood curse now: John Belushi, John Candy, then Chris Farley. Creepy.
Firstly, I highly suggest reading it. It’s so brilliant and funny and sad and perfect all at the same time.
I didn’t think Chris Farley was very appropriate for the part, but I could see the other two. And yeah, apparently Black is the new Fat but I’m not sure if I could see him in the part. Depends on whether or not he can act smart and crazy and horribly socially undeveloped. And southern.
The character is a genius of medieval philosophy and literature, with an MA in the subject, but he also lives with his mom and only left New Orleans on one occasion in his entire life. He’s absolutely childish and has the most absurd personality. I’m laughing just sitting her thinking about it, a testament to the novel’s quality. I just may go read it for a fourth time…
@Mike Spence: That’s an interesting point, especially about filmmakers loosing themselves. I too think it often wise, aesthetically speaking, not to offer or force answers, but merely to fully explore the questions. It is so important to provoke thought, and perhaps by proffering answers, one risks stymieing the provocation.
Pretty much the entire career of Erich von Stroheim (I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned in the first post), considered by many to be the greatest tragedy in film history. (EDIT: Just noticed Henry Krinkle already mentioned Greed)
And Nathan already mentioned Orson Welles, but I think the lost footage of Magnificent Ambersons is worth noting in particular. In its destruction we were robbed of a second Citizen Kane (or something even more superior, I would argue).
I for one hold out hope for Magnificent Ambersons. The studio knowingly destroyed the full cuts of the film to make room in storage, but not before sending one copy to Welles in South America (He was working on a project in Brazil). So the million dollar question is: What did Welles do with his copy? People are working industriously to find out the answer and hopefully, the full version of Magnificent Ambersons. So yeah, there is a shred of hope, albeit a slim one.
Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
This film has always struck me as one of the most profoundly existential films in cinema, but now that I’m writing a paper on it for class, turns out I can’t really find anything on this subject in the vast reaches of the internet (except apparently some professor at UC Berkeley includes The Third Man on his syllabus for his class on existentialism). So let me know your thoughts.
Anyway, this is my first post and I thought it would be a fun discussion.
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Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
Yeah, I considered articulating my thoughts further but hesitated because I’d be embarrassed if no one else saw where I was coming from. Rather, I was hoping people would be coming out of the woodwork to say they felt the same way. Also, I don’t know how many people would be very enthusiastic about reading some college student’s pseudo-intellectual babble about a metaphor no one else sees.
But if you’ve seen the film and are genuinely curious…?
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Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
I appreciate your point and curiosity very much, and I’ll explain what I meant if you’ll give me a minute. However I still can’t help but feel that posting an opinion that no one is going to read, for whatever reason, feels rather tragic. Shouting into the abyss, as it were.
Go to Comment
Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
To start at the beginning…
I think it is important to first consider the film’s context, and in my opinion The Third Man is quintessentially a postwar film. Being as that the war signified, for many, the death of God, I thought it a profound metaphor for a Nietzsche flavored existential crisis, the ruins of Vienna perhaps being the rubble of one’s moral compass or the aftermath of the collapse of one’s guiding principles. As both Nietzsche and Descartes admonish against too eagerly tearing down one’s beliefs with out preparing some cartesian structure to inhabit in the interum, what The Third Man provides is a visual manifestation of the effects of the Death of God. Vienna, then, divided up amongst the four powers, could be perceived as the resulting fractured or fragmented reality, and the four powers each representing different systems of belief that might utilize to rebuild, and then there are the outsiders, the black marketeers represented by Lime. Doesn’t his cuckoo clock speech just smack of the Uber Mensch? And then there is Holly, who in my opinion was portrayed as rather impotent and who, in the end, gained nothing. Perhaps then, Holly is the avatar of Man, who from the very beginning was helplessly shuffled along by forces greater then he, merely reacting, never decisively acting until the very end. And do you remember what he was asked to lecture on? It was “Crisis of Faith”.
Anyway, that’s just how I’ve been reading into the movie. I’ve also had inklings as to others, but I’m curious what you think.
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Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
sorry, double post
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Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
Haha yeah, sorry if the name change threw you off. I appreciate that you cared enough to sort in out though.
And yeah, the cuckoo clock speech, while famous, is inaccurate. Still though, I think we can appreciate his point.
When you said “this is a story about a guy”, did you mean Lime or Holly Martins? If you were referring to Lime I’m curious as to how you feel that he was useful. I got the impression that the scene in the hospital with the sick children was meant to impress upon the viewer that Lime did such harm that he needed to be apprehended and prosecuted, that his outlook does not justify or excuse his actions, and perhaps that is the significance of the scene where his fingers are shown struggling with the sewer grate, that is, a visual metaphor for his failure to actually transcend.
But if it was Holly you were referring to, I’d argue that the first scene in the hotel lobby seemed to indicate that Holly was meant to seem as a leaf caught helplessly in the wind: Calloway takes him to the military hotel, then a random guy asks him to lecture thus enabling him to stay in Vienna, and then the Baron summons him. Its as if life happens to or at him, rather then his being a potent agent or force in the world. And then when he flees from the child, and later still, when his love interest repeatedly chastises him and ultimately rejects him, I feel all this points to a director’s intention to emphasize Holly’s being pathetic. However, this is why the final scene between Holly and Lime is so poignant, because Holly symbolically took the gun from the dieing man and with it, took matters into his own hands, for the first time in the film. And the shot echoes across the labyrinthine tunnels, across the convolutions of philosophy and life and the universe.
Ultimately it seems to me that Lime was rising to the place of Uber Mensch, but Man will ultimately betray him and gun him down in the name of civilization, and it will be a thankless job. Man will not get the girl for his action, and he will always feel sort of shitty about what he did. This seems to me what Graham Greene may have been trying to say.
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Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
Granted, I’m clearly projecting something on to the film, but I think that is indicative of some motive on the part of Carol Reed to provoke such a reaction.
and yeah, I think that his “Crisis of Faith” lecture is the most literal manifestation of this motive. And if you go on to consider the works of literature he is asked to speak on, such as Ulysses by James Joyce, one finds Carol Reed overtly directing the spectator to consider the postmodern.
Go to Comment
Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
Haha thanks Strawdawg. I was so excited to discover the Auteurs, I was hoping I’d finally found a place where someone might give a crap about my pseudo-intellectual babble and respond in kind. I feel like a young Bazin wandering into the cinemateque, I wonder who it is that will be my Godard and Truffaut and how long before I meet them, and then how long before we change the world. Its so exciting!
Go to Comment
Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
Hmmm that’s interesting, I’d mostly dismissed that bit about the Russians as merely plot so I’ll have to think about it. But one thought that springs to mind is that in the post war era, being useful to the Russians had a certain connotation to it, and probably a negative one, like he’s in the devil’s pocket or something. At any rate it certainly raises the question of how, or in what manner was he useful to the Russians, and I can’t help but think that whatever it was, it probably couldn’t have been good for the US or Britain. I also can’t help but sort of feel that while the line seems to imply that he may have been functional, the rest of the film doesn’t seem to really try to emphasize that.
Its interesting that you don’t agree about Holly being ineffectual. I was really getting the sense that he was just getting batted around, and the way you phrase it: “will act” I think kind of implies a deterministic dynamic that I’m talking about. While he may act, he never really seemed free to me. I just got the general sense that the film made an effort to humble him as a protagonist before the eyes of the audience. The way he likens himself to one of his pulp-fiction characters betrays, I think, a certain naivety.
I think you’re definitely right about the notion of the two existences colliding though, and I liked your other points too. I think that my analysis is definitely still underdeveloped, I’ll think about it some more. But in the mean time, I wonder if you could site examples from the film’s form to support your idea (perhaps the way the camera treats Holly versus Lime, or maybe in some dialectic formed by two scenes)?
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Existentialism in The Third Man? Anyone? over 2 years ago
@Robert W Peabody III: True there was no post modernism with a capital P, but even the mere invocation Modernism (and note Holly’s inability to respond) could be construed as even more appropriate or relevant to my analysis.
And I think that selection from Lime’s dialogue betrays more of a Machiavellian attitude than anything else, Nietzsche’s uber mensch isn’t necessarily an atheist, but merely he who rises in the absence of God and transcends the inhibitions that oft follow faith. But Lime isn’t inhibited, he characteristically moves between the zones with ease, he transcends the barriers that Holly is visually hung up on through out the film, moving between liminal spaces like a veritable Dionysus. I remain undecided.
Regarding the rest of your remark, I’ll have to think about it some more. Some of it I agree, some of it I not sure on yet. I’ll get back to you. At any rate, our discussion has been invaluable to my paper, thank you.
@Doinel: But the uber mensch is inherently useful, in fact that was the point of greatest personal contention regarding my analysis of the film – that the film seemed to strive to emphasize unambiguity on Lime’s part. But if you’re right that he’s useful, then all the better. But I get the sense that you’re arguing that his usefulness is what enables his existence, then I don’t know, I’m not sure how Nietzsche would feel about that to be honest.
@Frank P. Tomasulo: I think you said many interesting and wonderful things and wanted to thank you for your input, particularly your break-down of the final scene which is exactly how I felt about it and more and is so in accord with my general gut feeling about the film as a whole. I’ll have more to say on your other points later. But yes, the death of God to which I was referring was indeed the Nietzscheian, with all the characteristics which you applied to it taken into account.
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What books would you like to see adapted for the screen? over 2 years ago
I know everyone’s going to say “but that’s impossible”, but I’ve always dreamed of directing a Thomas Pynchon novel, particularly Crying of Lot49, Gravity’s Rainbow, or V.
And if it can’t be me, then someone who won’t try to adapt them literally but that would have their own personal take on each novel. Some one like Cronenberg, some one who’s proven they know how to create something new, an original piece of art out of a preexisting one. Because if it was already successful in its own medium as it was, then what could it stand to gain by being adapted literally, but in an inevitably truncated form? I think Kubrick was the obvious master of this; indeed, what is crucial in adaptation is not faithfulness to the original, but what new and personal art can be derived from it. If I am a different artist then the author, then a literal adaptation would merely be reproduction art, or counterfeit art. Failure to create some thing as good as the original is absolutely inevitable through literal translation. No, because I am a different and unique artist, so should my artwork be unique and different, therefor if I were to adapt something, I would focus on what in the novel stood out to me and create from that anew.
Along the same vein of impossible novels, I’d also like to see Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace adapted for the big screen (I think my postmodern predispositions are beginning to betray themselves). A work as beautiful and heartbreaking as Infinite Jest, despite its unique form, begs to be made into a trilogy of some sort.
That said, I’ve also yet to see a half way decent adaptation of The Odyssey, that is, with respect to the poetry that it truly is rather then some over-budgeted spectacle.
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What books would you like to see adapted for the screen? over 2 years ago
OH! This just came to me, but holy hell, wouldn’t it be awesome??: FAUST BY BERGMAN OR FELLINI (in a perfect world, I should add. But I’d settle for Terry Gilliam…)
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What books would you like to see adapted for the screen? over 2 years ago
double post
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What books would you like to see adapted for the screen? over 2 years ago
triple post
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What movies should I rent right now? over 2 years ago
I apologize if this is a really obvious thread, but it could potentially be very useful. My school library has pretty much every important film ever made and it takes me forever to pick something, so I thought I’d preemptively decide what to rent tonight. As a film auteur I have this problem where I know a billion great movies and have a bunch I’ve been meaning to see, but I can never think of them when I’m at the library. So any suggestion is welcome, nothing is too obvious or too obscure, too elite or too low brow.
My tastes go something like this:
favorite director: Tarkovsky
close second: Renoir
close runners up: Antonioni, Orson Welles, Bresson
I like films where the form carries a lot of the weight, where plot and dialogue are slightly less essential then visual metaphor and scene-to-scene dialectic. Something pregnant with meaning and composed of manifold layers working together…or just something stupidly entertaining like National Treasure or any Jane Austen novel.
So show me what you’ve got
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Losing Yourself in a Film over 2 years ago
If just the right two guys walked in here right now, this could easily turn into a deep, profound, and ultimately futile philosophical discussion on aesthetics. Luckily I’m not one of those guys. I know next to nothing about aesthetics. But we can improvise…
For some, loosing one’s self in a work of art is to fulfill the artist’s highest goals. I believe it is often referred to as “aesthetic arrest”. This is true for a friend of mine, he actually strives for this in his art work and, in succeeding, beings the viewer close to nonexistence, thereby completing his metaphor for death.
I tend to disagree with him however. Indeed, in my own screen writing I often strive to reject the spectator, refusing them access, taking various measures to prevent the audience from such aesthetic arrest. I believe this form of escapism, while morally neutral, I believe to be akin to drug use, self indulgent, and unproductive. People often become addicted to it (take television for instance). And I know I am not alone in pursuing this goal with my artwork.
Most of you are familiar with the french film critic Andre Bazin (my hero), he wrote at length upon the virtues of deep focus, for instance, for the very fact that it forces the spectator to actively engage the film, rather then take a purely passive stance. They are forced to use their minds as they watch, provoking thought and then growth. It is somewhere along these lines that my sentiments lay.
But sometimes, I think, we should be allowed our little indulgences. So a loose-your-self flick is like candy, occasionally permissible.
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What movies should I rent right now? over 2 years ago
@rocky: Those are wonderful suggestions. Seventh Seal and Citizen Kane are easily in my personal top ten of all time list. But I think I need some Hitchcock in my life tonight….
@Rossoneri: Yeah, Stalker is another one of my all time favs. Solaris didn’t do as much for me, but perhaps that is cause enough to watch it again?
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What movies should I rent right now? over 2 years ago
haha, but I haven’t seen the first Gremlins! I WON’T KNOW WHATS GOING ON!!
@Drew: haha, I thought it sounded familiar so I just looked it up on wikipedia…its about a girl who can’t stop dancing?
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downloading/pirating movies: cine-faux pas?? over 2 years ago
Should one feel guilty for pirating movies? Why or why not? Isn’t it a godsend to the poor, culturally starved little mid-western boy with no other access to high art? Or is it the devil and directly responsible for the high cost of Criterions?
I’ve started to dabble but now I feel guilty, so alleviate my guilt or set me straight.
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What movies should I rent right now? over 2 years ago
hahaha well its on the BFI’s top10 so I guess I should give it a try.
@Rosseneri: That’s a lot of movies to name and I couldn’t recall them all. But let me try:
Tarkovsky: Mirror, Andrei Rublev, Ivan’s childhood, solaris, stalker
Renoir:Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion
Welles:Citizen Kane, Magnificent Ambersons
Bresson: Balthezaar, Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket, Man Escaped, l’argent, Mouchette
I know I’ve seen more renoir and welles, but they just aren’t coming to me at the moment
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downloading/pirating movies: cine-faux pas?? over 2 years ago
haha oh wow, everyone? Really? I thought this would be more controversial….
(and if I go to hell for downloading Gremlin’s II, I swear…)
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Losing Yourself in a Film over 2 years ago
…but that said, I like movies and television shows that allow you to choose which of the two experiences I’d prefer. I think Charlie Kaufman films are particularly of this persuasion, and then the tv series Neon Genesis Evangelion was pretty much designed to be that way.
There’s also something to be said I think for films in which you loose yourself, but left thinking long after it ends.
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downloading/pirating movies: cine-faux pas?? over 2 years ago
Wow, given this site’s relationship with criterion I expected to find the locals to show much more fidelity to buying DVDs, if not watching them exclusively on the big screen.
but even worse then youtube: watching movies one youtube on an iphone.
I’d quote a video of David Lynch chastising people for watching movies on iphones, but there are so many expletives it wouldn’t make any sense after removing them.
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What movies should I rent right now? over 2 years ago
@Madvillainy: ooh, thanks. I’ve seen some of those, been meaning to see others. I appreciate the reminder. You have good taste my friend.
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What movies should I rent right now? over 2 years ago
YES. So good. That opening shot??
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Projects that never materialized over 2 years ago
Apparently they’ve tried like three times now to film “Confederacy of Dunces” but each time they start production the leading man died, its considered something of a Hollywood curse now: John Belushi, John Candy, then Chris Farley. Creepy.
Also a huge shame cuz I friggin love that book.
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Projects that never materialized over 2 years ago
Firstly, I highly suggest reading it. It’s so brilliant and funny and sad and perfect all at the same time.
I didn’t think Chris Farley was very appropriate for the part, but I could see the other two. And yeah, apparently Black is the new Fat but I’m not sure if I could see him in the part. Depends on whether or not he can act smart and crazy and horribly socially undeveloped. And southern.
The character is a genius of medieval philosophy and literature, with an MA in the subject, but he also lives with his mom and only left New Orleans on one occasion in his entire life. He’s absolutely childish and has the most absurd personality. I’m laughing just sitting her thinking about it, a testament to the novel’s quality. I just may go read it for a fourth time…
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Losing Yourself in a Film over 2 years ago
@Mike Spence: That’s an interesting point, especially about filmmakers loosing themselves. I too think it often wise, aesthetically speaking, not to offer or force answers, but merely to fully explore the questions. It is so important to provoke thought, and perhaps by proffering answers, one risks stymieing the provocation.
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Lost Movies over 2 years ago
Pretty much the entire career of Erich von Stroheim (I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned in the first post), considered by many to be the greatest tragedy in film history. (EDIT: Just noticed Henry Krinkle already mentioned Greed)
And Nathan already mentioned Orson Welles, but I think the lost footage of Magnificent Ambersons is worth noting in particular. In its destruction we were robbed of a second Citizen Kane (or something even more superior, I would argue).
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Lost Movies over 2 years ago
I for one hold out hope for Magnificent Ambersons. The studio knowingly destroyed the full cuts of the film to make room in storage, but not before sending one copy to Welles in South America (He was working on a project in Brazil). So the million dollar question is: What did Welles do with his copy? People are working industriously to find out the answer and hopefully, the full version of Magnificent Ambersons. So yeah, there is a shred of hope, albeit a slim one.
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